On December 23, 1954, a team of doctors in Boston led by Dr. Joseph Murray, a plastic surgeon, transplanted a kidney into a dying, 23-year-old man in the first successful long-term transplant of a human organ. At the time, some hailed this revolutionary medical advancement as “a miracle of medicine” while others accused Dr. Murray and his team of “playing God,” saying the surgery should not have been done. Ethical debates have accompanied medical advancements throughout history and this is particularly true for transplantation medicine. In the 50 years that have passed since that first successful kidney transplant, organ transplantation has improved extensively and saved the lives of more than 400,000 people in the United States alone. Murray's work is celebrated today as one of the greatest advancements in modern medicine.
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Storey, B. et al. (2008). Psychosocial Issues in Composite Tissue Allotransplantation. In: Hewitt, C.W., Lee, W.P.A., Gordon, C.R. (eds) Transplantation of Composite Tissue Allografts. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-74682-1_32
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